To source a copy of
'Through The Mill' - The life of Joseph Rank please
email
secretary@ranktrust.org

First published
in 1945
Second impression 1946
Third and special impression 1969
150th anniversary edition (2004)

Through the Mill - The Life of Joseph Rank by R.G. Burnett

The story of a man who was a giant among men. He began life
with few endowments. He had neither riches nor influence,
yet built and maintained what was the most successful
milling enterprise in the world; and was equally at home
teaching children Sunday School. Why? Simply because all
knew they could trust him.

His life can be summed up in a few words - thrift, hard
work, humanity, honesty, fidelity and a deep religious
faith. A man who discovered that he enjoyed giving away,
more than making money.

Prologue JOSEPH RANK’S
last visit to Hull was overshadowed by tragedy. Those who stood
beside him as he gazed upon the ruin of the mills he had built
in his prime were deeply aware of it. So, no doubt, was he.
But he gave no sign. He was always at his best when facing
difficulty.

The Clarence Mills,
his first great achievement and the symbol of his life’s
work, had been destroyed by German bombs. True, the high
stacks and the lofty outer walls still stood beside the
murky river, but they were no more than a gaunt and broken
shell. Where the heavy rollers had ground the grain, where
the mighty engines had throbbed night and day, all was
silent as a tomb. Some men would have looked upon it as a tomb,
the final grave of valiant and high-hearted enterprise.

As Joseph Rank looked
at those blackened walls, a man far in the eighth decade
of his life, only a few months from its end, his mind must
have returned to the days when he first planned these mills.
It was his boldest venture. It marked his emergence from
the mass of men. It laid the foundations of his fortune,
and of many another’s. All that he
became, all he was able to do for his countrymen, was there
in embryo. The mill became a landmark. It may be said to
have done much to establish the commercial prosperity of
Hull. It was the apple of his eye. Now - only desolation
remained.

Yet of the little group about him in the yard he
asked only one question, in his blunt, Yorkshire way: ‘Did
you get the horses out?’

Yes - they had got the horses
out. Every one of them. That satisfied him. He had always
loved horses, and could not bear to think of any of them
suffering. As for the mills, turning back to the car, he
exclaimed: ‘What’s
done can’t be undone. It’s no good thinking of
the past. It’s the future that matters. A few bombs
can’t destroy our work. After the war we shall build
new and better mills.’